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| Mom at Boyce-Thompson - 2005 |
I can
remember our many trips back to Indiana and Missouri to see my grandmother and
my aunts… and during which they spent many hours wandering around their yards
and flower beds and gardens looking at this, looking at that, cutting this,
cutting that. Coming home, we always had trunk-loads of paper sacks and other containers with stuff Mom was
trying to keep alive long enough to get it home and into the dirt here. Some of the stuff made it
and thrived and some of it didn't, but not for lack of trying.
Arizona’s soil and climate is good for some things, but not for others.
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| Sweet Pea |
We were
driving home in June, 1968 and as we were cruising along on a Colorado
highway somewhere in the valley over between Poncha Springs and Del Norte along US285, she spied
a lilac bush growing and blooming up by a small ranch house. She pulled
off, grabbed her cutting tool and went to knock on the front door. Not
receiving an answer, she didn't think those homeowners would mind too
much her having just one little piece of their shrub (or maybe two...) and she clipped
off some cuttings to see if she could get them to grow around here...
alas, lilacs are one of the things that will NOT grow in the Arizona
desert. Up north in the higher country, yes, but here in the Sonoran
Desert heat an emphatic no-go despite Mom's attentive ministrations
and plaintiff exhortations.
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| Christmas Stuff? |
Heading
south again on that highway that day I could almost feel the hot breath of the
Colorado State Horticultural Law Enforcement and Plant Theft Patrol (the
CSHLEPTP, or just say "schleptip") on the back of our necks as we
sped away from the scene of the crime.
So I was
looking around the backyard this afternoon in the great
late-afternoon-springtime light and I grabbed my camera to take some photos
of some of the stuff she’s growing. I noticed that the rose bush she and
I planted on New Year’s didn't leaf out, so I guess that will be
yanked out and taken back to the nursery for a refund, if she ever gets around to
it. I think the prettiest ones are the bright red carnations - at least I think that's what they are. (No room for that photo.)
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| Iris |
There are
lots of other things growing out there... as you can see. Her
favorites were always her Iris's. The past few years, they haven't
bloomed in the abundant quantities of years past -- but there is this one out
there today, a royal purple one. We don't know why they are not as prolific as
in years past -- perhaps the soil needs something. Or maybe her bulbs are just
too old.
Good news
for me… along with all of the flowers,
she’s also got cabbage out there, Swiss Chard, lettuce, beets, peas… probably
green onions… I can’t say the flowers aren't real pretty, but
I’m partial to stuff I can EAT, you know? And I do NOT eat flowers. But
vegetables aren’t as photogenic, are they?
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| Roses |
These photos
are all of stuff Mom's got going in the back yard right now -- all of it
obtained legally I assure
you. It’s just that she cannot outrun the fuzz as well as she used to, so
she gave up on that life of interstate landscape crime and sneaking around
other people's backyards, clippers in hand…
April 17, 2013
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